Another school shooting in Marysville, Wa

Not really.

I will never understand the American obsession with firearms. It's baffling and honestly quite stupid in my opinion.

It's also pretty absurd that people in this thread are okay with school shootings as a 'consequence' so you can keep your guns. Do you read what you type out? You guys sound ass backwards.

It is not. You're assuming everyone who buys a gun just wants to kill people. Some people buy a gun simply for protection. Some people just like to go to ranges and shoot. Marksmanship is a competitive sport. Some people hunt. Some people just collect things. Gun ownership, in responsible moderation (it exists), is fine. And my point stands. If you ban alcohol, then we have no more drunk driving deaths, which as I said before, is worse than mass shootings.

Answer my question. Since you care about the lives of people, would you be for banning of alcohol if it meant no more deaths to drunk driving?

You sound like a broken record. "I don't understand. I don't understand. I don't understand." Quit being a narrow minded person and try looking at the situation from different viewpoints.

Ok.. Lets get this over with.. There have been something around 300 deaths since 1980 with school shootings in the United States.. That is over a span of 34 years.. Currently within the US we have around 75+ million students K through 12 to attend school each year.. These tragedies are awful things to happen, but people need to get some fucking reality in their lives.. We are currently in a 4 decade low of violent crimes occurring within the United States. We have politicians that want to drop billions of dollars in adding guards to every school to prevent this from happening.. MEANWHILE things like influenza and pneumonia claim 25 to 50 thousands lives within the US EACH YEAR. These events, though terrible, should not be the guiding reason in sweeping reforms.. It is fucking illogical.. The odds of getting killed in a school shooting is far less than getting struck by lightning, or getting killed on the car ride to school..

Stop making sense.

All schools need armed guards. Gun control will do little to prevent horrible instances like this one from occurring.

It's not a guarantee. In fact, if anyone's going to shoot up a school, they'll target the guards first. So if anything, you're only putting more people at risk.Even if the guard starts firing, the shooter will at least claim a few victims before either being killed or killing himself. Of course, having more gun education would have lowered the risk of kids getting guns from their parents to bring to school.

I mean in a firefight nothing's a guarantee, but at least they'd have a fighting chance if there was some line of defense. Also, it's not necessarily the case that they'd go for guards first. They may simply try to circumvent the guards and kill as many unarmed persons as they can before the guards could get to them. I'm saying that at least if there was a trained security guard or guards on campus, that even if a shooter circumvented the guards to begin with, potential victims wouldn't have to wait purely for police to arrive: armed guards could attempt to intervene and take the shooter out.

To put it simply, some defense is undoubtedly better than no defense, and right now many schools have no defense at all.

Personally, I'd just go with metal detectors.

Hm, kind of debateable. Many people who have been bullied while young end up being bullied as adults too. And it can in some cases ruin their lives.

I also question the whole socialising with other kids thing. There are plenty of ways to make friend outside of school - and they will likely be better and truer friends. Also, there are many who don't really fit in / connect in school... and once again that can carry a momentum of social failure / anxiety that can spread into adult life.

But I agree that it isn't feasible for everyone. What we really need are better schools where spiritual values are taught.

Um yeah... he kind of shot himself in the head after he murdered those people.

Wasn't there a saying after Sandy Hook "never again"?

Because the Constitution says the Americans have the right to kill things. It's that simple. You make it sound like killing people is always some sort of zero end negative. It's not. Killing in self defense has been acceptable for thousands of years.

The fact that guns have one purpose and that one purpose is irrelevant. Why a gun is used is what makes the issue, not what the gun was intended for.

Oh yes.. Let's spend billions of dollars on something that claims a handful of lives each year, while ignoring other things that claim many many times more, including the lives of children.. This is the problem with the media, it has overblown these terrible events to the point people are fearmongering in which politicians on both sides have been using it as a platform.. Yes these are horrible events.. But they are so rare that to make sweeping changes based upon it is absolutely ridiculous.. This is the kind of rarity to the point that even adding guards isn't going to prevent them from happening.. People need to realize that shit happens, that no matter how much we try to prepare for it, it will happen.. Just because I put on my seat belt or put on a bicycle helmet, there is the possibility I will die.. Even if I am driving safely.. The odds we are talking about school shootings are astronomically low, and we are literally talking about dropping billions upon billions of dollars on something to prevent the deaths of a handful of lives per year, while ignoring other things that claim FAR more lives each year, including children..

How bout we invest in the mental healthcare of children through young adults more? Seeing as IDK 4600 people (ages 10 through 24) commit suicide each year.. That is over 150,000 lives claimed over that 34 year period it took for 300 students to die in school shootings..

It is utterly absurd to make a unrealistic claim like that.. You not only would have to spend an enormous amount of money but you would have to invade people's privacy even further to monitor them.. People need to get this through their fucking heads, bad things happen.. Your never going to prevent them 100% of the time.. And getting gunned down in a school is on the very bottom of list of things that will kill you in the United States..

Maybe its time we ban schools.

I wasn't saying it wasn't, it just clear to me that everyone said that after the last one. This won't be the last one either, but why they said it is confusing to me aswell

Who is "they"?

@The_Last_Ride: it's easy to see why people would say never again even if it's an unrealistic proclamation

No, not everyone said that. So it's obviously not that clear to you.

Here's the thing: I almost totally agree with you. In general, violent crime worldwide has steadily dropped over the past hundred years, and continues to do so both at home and abroad (technically at home even moreso), and this is well documented in books like Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature. However, although I realize violent crime will never hit zero, I think that police force funding, resources and personnel nationwide could be re-purposed from such pointless endeavors as the "war on drugs" to seeing that our schools are better protected. Ideally, all schools should have armed guards, to protect from violence both without and within; will this ever happen?: no. However, like I said, moving police efforts away from intensive drug busting and the like and towards better protecting schools would be a win-win with no added burden to the taxpayer: all resources could be recycled from within absent new sources of revenue; violent crime related to drugs will go down; drug related incarcerations will go down; and schools will be better protected.

On the point of mental healthcare, I absolutely could not agree more. There needs to be a sea-change in awareness about and support in improving mental healthcare throughout this entire country. This includes massive funding, massive awareness campaigns, and a massive shift in the national attitude towards treating and helping those who struggle with mental illness -- or even just a thrust towards cultural de-stigmatizing of people seeking basic counseling would be a good start! If we want to lower instances of mass shootings like this one -- albeit yes they are already statistically very low -- this is the first way to go. The problem is that right now there still exists a significant cultural stigma amongst some about seeking psychological help in any form, and before we can really make headway on the issue of mental health, that stigma has got to go. Luckily, within another generation, I think there's a good chance it will be gone nearly altogether.

Until then, some level of increased defense in schools might be an option worth looking at if it's done right.

Except drugs ruin lives on a daily basis and school shootings are rarer than drunk driving accidents. Taking away manpower from fighting crime that happens on a daily basis so that they may stand watch for something that might never happen at all just isn't very effective. As I said before, I'd opt for metal detectors. If you prevent guns from ever getting into the school in the first place, then you don't need armed guards in the schools.

Drugs might ruin lives on a daily basis, but one could make a case that the "war on drugs" is ruining more lives than the drugs themselves. That's not to say that all drugs should be outright legalized, but it's possible to decriminalize drug use while still prosecuting dealers. By all means, arrest and prosecute dealers, but drug use never should have been a criminal issue, that's a public health issue. It's a waste of resources to arrest and imprison drug addicts, and one could make a strong case that that ruins their lives more than continuing to use drugs. But I think the bottom line is that the "war on drugs" has been an utter failure. People are going to continue using drugs no matter how much we try to stop them, so it's time to stop wasting so much time and money prosecuting people who just want to get high. The "war on drugs" is a war that can't be won, so it's time to stop. When something doesn't work, you do something else.

Now, that's not to say that we should spend less on fighting drugs and divert those resources to hiring armed guards for schools. For starters, that increases the risks of the GUARDS doing the shootings. Armed guards are fallible humans, and there's always the potential for "sure I shot that kid, but I really did think he had a gun." And sure, those incidents would likely be very rare, but school shootings are already very rare even without the presence of armed guards. Would drastically increasing the number of armed guards in schools increase the number of accidental shootings by guards to the point where it counteracts any benefit of having the guards there in the first place? I don't know, but I think that's a possibility to consider.

And I'm also not sure that installing more metal detectors in schools is a good idea. Sure, it'd detect people with guns before they get into school. But unless you ALSO hire armed guards, what's to stop a shooter from simply setting off the metal detector and then walking into the school with a gun anyway? And this is ignoring that students are going to be setting off the metal detectors all the damn time. And every time that happens, you've gotta stop and more closely inspect the student on an individual basis. Ever been to jury duty? Notice how long it takes just to get people in the building because they have everyone go through a metal detector and then give a closer inspection to everyone whose belt buckle sets off the alarm? Now imagine that for the entire student body, every single day. I can maybe see that working for smaller schools, but for larger schools that'd probably be way more trouble than it's worth. And that's not even getting into the costs. As much money as it'd cost to install metal detectors and hire guards for all schools, couldn't that money be better spent towards actual EDUCATION? I don't know how much a metal detector for a school costs, but you've gotta figure that you need at least one guard attending the metal detector as students pass through it. Even giving that guard a modest salary of $30,000 a year, that's $30,000 that could go towards books for the library or scientific and art supplies for the art and science classrooms. And that's without even beginning to get into the costs of the actual metal detector. Is it worth spending that much money just to prevent shootings that are already rare, when lots of schools are already underfunded as it is? I don't know, but that's something to think about.

Also I have to mention something about JyePhye's comment about reducing the stigma of mental illness. That's a nice idea, but I have no idea how to actually go about it. Especially when you tie mental health to the whole school shooting issue. Because that's kind of what's being proposed. Increased mental health treatment is being proposed as a means to prevent school shootings, and that sort of increases the perception that mentally ill people are such a threat that they'll shoot up a school. Doesn't that just stigmatize mental illness even more? I mean, if I was mentally ill, I might avoid treatment before. But I'd DEFINITELY avoid treatment now. This is going from saying "mentally ill people are weird and creepy" to "mentally ill people are gonna murder your ass, that's why we're focusing on treatment and detection: to find them before they go on a shooting rampage." So, this is just me personally, but I'd deliberately avoid treatment just so I can continue to say, "I'm not mentally ill, I'm just kind of weird; please don't be terrified of me." I'd far rather be the weird kid than the kid that everyone is fucking terrified of. So, yeah...it's definitely a nice idea to give better help to the mentally ill and reduce the stigma on mental illness. I just think that that'll be incredibly hard once you tie the two issues together and make "better treatment for the mentally ill" the solution to the issue of school shootings. That just really seems like it has the potential to INCREASE the stigma on mental illness.

And here we go with the gun control discussion...

guns are not the problem... it's the person with a messed up head obtaining a firearm somewhere and shoots up a school.. i'm pretty sure he either got the gun illegally or must have got it from home. (like the Sandy Hook shooter). anyways our country has a mental health system that needs to be revamped and also parents needs to be parents and teach their kids to deal with problems the proper way and not resort to shooting a person to "solve" the problem. i think many of us can agree that there are parents that don't take care of their children and have a child going mentally insane over teenage drama and ends up shooting a place. parents needs to be parents and start taking care of their children and teach them proper values and if a child seems disturbed ? get him or her some help before any more tragedies like this happen. so yeah..

omg, not literally everyone said that... You know what i meant

Dat awkward moment when...

When chaoscougar comes into a thread involving guns?

No, I don't know what you mean. You're unclear at the best of times. I think you need to reread your posts before you hit send. Possibly choose different words next time.

@airshocker: ops, sorry. I mix the languages sometimes. Yeah i meant most people saying that stuff after Sandy Hook. Sorry if i was confusing

@Serraph105:

Are you trolling or just 2 cans short of a six pack?

I agree with this. You're always gonna get someone who abuses a privilege of some sort and you can't just focus all your resources on that one person who does. Guns exist to kill but there are plenty of substitutes for guns and their sole purpose isn't to kill. Yeah more than one person started a school shooting... If you think about it though, we didn't start getting school shooting news until that one event that was publicized. The news will report school shootings for the sake of ratings too, not just cause it's a school shooting. They have 24 hours to present news, they gotta find something to put up to get viewers.

This doesn't change the fact that school shootings are bad, it's just that the news stations make it sound like it's a common occurrence.

Schools shootings in America have become regular news and it become terrible. I hope that the government will do something to stop the shootings in schools.

apparently the shooter was an avid atheist and video game player, maybe we should ban atheism and video games???

Yeah I am more outraged by the coverage of this and people throwing out IMMENSELY expensive solutions to this, quite frankly it is irresponsible.. There are many more things out there that kill far more Americans, including children, that can be prevented that no one gives a **** about.. It's actually pretty hilarious with the historical view the American culture has on mental health, when teen suicide dwarfs anything coming close to the figure this gives out.. These immense reactions and coverage of these events only make me lower my opinion to how STUPID the general public is.. We are at a age in which the information is easily at your finger tips, there is no excuse to be this ignorant and reactionary when you have access to the internet in looking at reliable sources.

There is absolutely nothing to be done.. If people are fucking flipping shit about the immensely small amount of fatalities with school shootings in the past 3 decades, how the hell can they keep sane with the numerous other causes of preventable death in the US that dwarfs these figures? Malpractice deaths for instance is in the hundred of thousands per year.. school shootings are so rare in fact that you would have to spend a exorbitant amount of money to prevent the very few deaths that occur, while completely ignoring far greater causes of preventable deaths in the United States.. That is irresponsible.. That is not logical nor sane.

"have become regular news"

You said it right there. "If it bleeds, it leads." That's what they say, right? Let's not take mass media coverage as a true indicator of the frequency of these occurrences. As someone already pointed out, violent crimes have been decreasing for the past 4 decades. Meanwhile, gun ownership is at an all time high. Doesn't quite fit the "OMG-we-gotta-do-something!" narrative.

Let's be sensible and look at data before we start implementing policy on little more than emotion.

That makes too much sense, we have to build our policies on school shootings and the ebola outbreak! **** the fact that car accidents cause some where around 30k fatalities a year, drunk driving deaths breaking 10k in 2012, or Influenza and Pneumonia claiming anywhere between 25k to over 50k a year.. We need to focus billions of dollars in two things that have claimed less than 20 people a year on average combined.

Jesus. Not even more guns could have saved him. At times like this, I wonder just how we can go on.

Funny that you mention the UK when you're 5 times more likely to be murdered in the USA than the UK.

The larger amount of "violent crimes" is due to what is considered a violent crime varies in different countries and the way in which they are recorded.

Cos freedom and lethal weapons come hand in hand right?

All those other first world countries without the right to carry guns around just aint as free right?

Im such a constrained, enslaved,oppressed individual without my right to buy a gun.

Fucking laughable.

What's laughable is you would seek to ban something when 99% of legal gun owners aren't the problem. That's truly laughable.

I didn't mention the UK. A picture did.

we should ask the dear leader he will know what to do

You do realize you just said a very shitty thing, right?